Friday
Unlike its oft-scorned stepsisters Monday and Tuesday, everybody adores Friday. When we were kids, Friday liberated us from school for the delicious weekends, it postponed homework, made promises of imminent trips to the beach, allowed us to stay up late for the Friday Night Fights. Us Catholics had to eat fish, of course, but no day is perfect. Growing up, Friday was the night of dances and deviltry. Those who had ‘em roared their spiffy convertibles down South Broadway, tops down, ladies enthroned in the passenger seats, loudest car wins. In college, Friday was the day before The Big Game. Fraternities took partying to a new level, parents visited, bands were playing everywhere, the mating game ran rampant. Friday was the day of hope, of endless possibilities, the cup was full and the horizon far off in the distance. Friday was the day the presents were put under the tree for speculation. Friday was the day when anything might happen, and often it did.
In our Golden Years---and who put lipstick on that pig?---Fridays are more sedate, more scheduled, but no less welcomed. There are street fairs to attend, garden festivals to consider, ball games at the nearby University of Florida to savor. St. Augustine is an overnight possibility two hours to the east, Cedar Key sits on the Gulf, a mere hour to the west. Friday is the entrance ramp to the weekend’s highway, the day when invitations are handed out, the moment when optimism abounds, that’s Friday. If things don’t always work out for the best, well, you’ll just have to blame Saturday for that.
The Gym
“If you want to get in shape, don’t sign up for this fancy diet or that cross-training business. No, the way to get in shape is to go to the gym every single day, change your clothes and take a shower. If you can do that every single day for a month, pretty soon you’ll start doing something while you’re there.”---Seth Godin
We have some guys at the gym who have taken Seth’s advice, although a few of them haven’t yet extricated themselves from the shower stage. Our place, LifeTime Fitness Center in downtown Ocala, is not exactly Muscle Beach, the clientele being largely over 50 years of age with not a one headed for the Mr. Aging Apollo Contest. The center is owned by Munroe Regional Medical Center, which treats the place as sort of an ugly stepsister, paying the help minimum wages, letting defective weight machines go unattended for months and knocking holes in the windows for air-conditioning. The gym has been owned by a succession of clumsy hospital administrators, each one worse than the next, until we have finally reached the nadir of fitness center proprietorship. You can tell things are getting rough when geezers are stumbling off the treadmills and there is noone there to catch them. If customers complain, the management calls them into the main office, stands them over a trapdoor, springs it and dumps them into an alligator pit below. Lately, there have been diminishing complaints.
I suppose you’re wondering why an exerciser might go there. So are we. I guess it’s because LifeTime was built and originally operated by Dr. Steve Gilman, an orthopedic surgeon who delivered a state-of-the-art facility. The LifeTime center is a huge, two-tier building with a rehab area and a large, heated, enclosed pool on the lower floor; upstairs is the fitness area and a sizeable section for cardiac rehab. Originally, there was a juice bar and other amenities on the second floor, but those were later deemed too frivolous for serious gymgoers by one or another of the long line of owners. The place is about thirty-five years old now and many of the clients have been going there forever. The majority start out as hospital patients, rehabbing from accidents or illnesses, with a hefty dose of heart-attack victims. Most of them are men. The wives initially come along, watch the proceedings and drive hubby home. Somewhere along the line, they get the notion that doing all this work before the heart attack hits might be a good idea. When cardiac rehab is concluded, many stay on and develop a fitness regimen. As time goes by, the place becomes part-gym, part social club, with the members developing relationships and off-campus friendships with one another. If somebody doesn’t show up at the place for a few days, a buddy will be nagging him back into action. It’s like an assisted living center without the shuffleboard.
Friday is a popular day at LifeTime, the treadmills humming, the gaffers and gaffettes discussing plans for the upcoming weekend, the ultimate fate of the Gators, when Charlie will be back after his angina problems and why that new kid over there (age 40) feels the need to toss his 50-lb. weights on the floor. “It must sound like the world is coming to an end on Floor One,” says Bennie from the Bronx. His supplicants nod avidly in agreement. We cast a jaundiced eye on young whippersnappers at LifeTime Fitness.
People continue to come for the same reasons people go anywhere. Despite all the shortcomings, they like it there. There is a genuine camaraderie, a we’re-all-in-this-together mentality as the battle continues against aging, the common enemy. The competition, the overblown egos of earlier ages does not raise its head in this place. There is legitimate concern for the wellbeing of the brethren, everyone holds his breath when Joe is undergoing chemo or Margaret is having her aorta repaired. We are a fatalistic bunch, but we are also optimists. Joe will be back in next week for a visit, probably Friday. We’ll kid him about his Dolphins, get him riled up, we’ll all be laughing. Maybe the gym will even fix the windows.
Aye, There’s The Rub
After the gym, every third Friday there is therapeutic massage for Bill at the nearby salon of Sheree The Reflexology Princess. Sheree is originally from Canada, but emigrated to Newburyport, Massachusetts at an early age, so she thinks of us as kinsmen and takes good care of me. I learned years ago that a visit to the massage salon every three weeks keeps my back off the chiropractor’s bench, a worthy trade.
Sheree is in her late forties, boundlessly energetic and spry as a leprechaun. Her skimpy frame belies strong hands and arms which can untie your knots and cause you to leave her place feeling like you are walking on clouds. If, however, you are one of those folks who likes to lie in semi-conscious peace on the massage table, wallowing in aromatherapy-candle bliss as soft Asian music caresses your eardrums, Sheree might not be the girl for you. Sheree will talk. She just can’t help herself. She will tell you about her new house and intellectually impoverished neighbors (she feels their pain), about her love for The Art of The Dance and her recent experiences therewith, about her upcoming maiden speech at Toastmasters, about her life’s desire to open a yoga studio and pass her knowledge on to grasshoppers everywhere. (I would go---the woman can twist herself into a pretzel and zip back to normal fast enough to make Houdini blush.) Mostly, though, Sheree will tell you about Reflexology.
Reflexology is a system of foot massage used to relieve tension and treat illness based on the theory that there are reflex points on the feet, hands and head which are linked to every part of the body. In other words, one of your toes may be affecting that crick in your neck, another one may be inhibiting your basic joie de vivre. Sheree will immediately take measures to rectify these insults, explaining how the head bone is connected to the neck bone, ad infinitum. If you have any doubts about this esoteric Reflexology business, that is probably because you are an uninformed dolt, although Sheree would never be so rude as to tell you so.
Now there are some clients, like, say, my friend Greg Poe, who is unduly obsessed with logic, who will not allow their feet to be touched. Sheree, who has some advanced degree in the subject, casts a sad Mona Lisa smile at this lot, understanding their shortcomings but regretful they will not allow themselves to experience The Pleasures of The Temple. I allow the woman a meager ten minutes at the end of my session rather than risk letting a tear descend to her charming cheek. She rewards me by attempting to place my toes back where they were twenty years ago, and God help any of them if there is the slightest hint of overlapping. Sheree has also discovered a device best described as toecuffs, which fits snugly over each digit and spaces them properly apart. She leaves them there for an appropriate period while she finishes up with something else. She would like her clients to don these little critters each night while watching television or even sleeping, but I don’t think she’s having much luck. Images persist of nocturnal cramps, leaping to the floor and landing on the ouchy toecuffs. Yowie!….times ten.
Reflexology aside, the massage experience is a cherry on Friday’s cake. When you walk outside, you are riding the Bliss Bus for several hours, tho’ sad for the fact it won’t come around again for another three weeks. It is vitally important, of course, to find the right massage therapist, a properly-schooled artist fully cognizant of which body part belongs where and how to fix it when it’s broken. Not everyone has the expertise, the compassion and the sage advice of a Sheree. If you find one, consider yourself lucky. And remember….you can always bring along earplugs.
Take Me Out To The Ball Game
The proper way to finish up any Friday is with a sports event and there are plenty at the nearby University of Florida. Siobhan and I alternate between softball and baseball, and the quality of the home teams are supreme. The Gator baseball team won the College World Series in Omaha last year and the softball girls lost in the Women’s College World Series finals to the University of Oklahoma, which somehow gets to play the thing in their own home town. UF won the WCWS in 2014 and 2015, so this is no one-trick pony.
It’s impossible to get season’s tickets in the 1500-seat softball park, so you have to buy them for individual games. This is not a fun experience as you sit with your cell phone and schedule in long conversation with the UF athletic department lady discussing the meaning of life and which seats you will get for each game. “Okay you can have Section A, Row 4, Seats 17 and 18 for Kentucky but you’ll need to move back a few rows for FSU.” This is still better than last year when the tickets were free and you had to get there an hour-and-a-half before each game. What does a fan do for an hour-and-a-half? Siobhan reads about rocks. Unfortunately for me, I never picked up the habit. I look at rosters, wander around and, on particularly vulnerable days, nip into the ice-cream booth. Don’t look at me like that---it’s Friday.
The level of play is crisp. Hard smashes to third base are routinely swallowed up by agile women playing close to home in case of a bunt. Shortstops range far and wide to pick off sharply-hit balls trying to find a path through the infield. Strong-armed center-fielders regulary whip the ball in to catch daring runners at the plate. Florida’s dynamite alpha-female, Kelly Barnhill, zips aspirins toward the batters at up to 70 mph, leaving them fanning in hopeful desperation. Not many years ago, when college softball became a fast-pitch sport, you might have rounded up a cast of intramural fraternity men to compete on an equal basis with the girls. Today, the frat boys would get their brains beat out. Softball elsewhere might be a hodge-podge of 12-11 traffic jams, but at Florida (and the rest of the Southeastern Conference) it is serious business played by wizards at the top of their game. And the best of these games---the ones for which teams trot out their Supergirl pitchers and draw their most avid whooping crowds---well, they’re on Friday, of course. It just stands to reason.
That’s all, folks….
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